When the Ring Governs: Institutional Politics and the Spirit of the Establishment
The Core Proposition of Institutional Politics
In the contemporary political spectrum, the “establishment” is often seen as a symbol of moderation and stability. The media regards it as the voice of reason, and scholars view it as the cornerstone of institutional stability. However, this perception obscures a deeper truth: the establishment does not represent a political stance but rather a form of existence detached from politics itself.
They are like the Ring of Power in The Lord of the Rings—forged as tools, but infused with will. Once loyal instruments of their masters, they now bend the will of those who wield them. When an institution gains its own inertia and logic of interest, it no longer needs its original driving force or accommodates doubt and innovation; it only requires self-maintenance and expansion. The establishment is the managers and beneficiaries of this institutional self-preservation process. Their emergence and growth signify the separation of governance from politics, turning it into a professional, inheritable, and promotable technical career. Once governance becomes a profession, those originally meant to assist politics begin to dominate it.
Part One: The Essential Characteristics of the Establishment
Cross-Ideological Logic of Power Maintenance
The establishment is neither left-wing nor right-wing. They can don the garb of any ideology as long as it maintains the operation of the institution and their own interests. They can talk about progress today, conservatism tomorrow, and even embrace populism the day after—whatever best alleviates management pressures. Their essence is not the choice of public values but the maintenance of power.
They are a cross-party alliance of interests, a mechanistic group composed of technocratic bureaucrats, capital representatives, media manipulators, and ideological gatekeepers within academia. Their primary goal is not the pursuit of truth or the realization of a social ideal, but ensuring that the current system does not break down and that their positions within it remain unshaken.
Technocratic Governance Replacing Political Judgment
When governance becomes a profession that can be trained for, assessed, and promoted within, the question of “why govern” is quietly set aside, replaced by “how to govern more efficiently.” Efficiency and procedure gradually supersede purpose and belief, and politics degenerates from a forum for public value debates into a desk for administrative divisions.
In this process, the establishment ceases to be a tool under political subjects and becomes a representative of the institution’s own will. They treat governance itself as the highest mission and regard politics as noise. They gradually form an autonomous community of interests, monopolizing institutional discourse, suppressing non-establishment forces, and guiding the entire society toward depoliticized technocratic governance.
Institutional Inertia and the Dissolution of Ideals
For this reason, the establishment is actually a potential enemy of all political factions. Any group that still holds political beliefs—whether left-wing egalitarians or right-wing conservatives—will eventually find that their ideals, once entering the establishment, will be filtered, diluted, and technically processed, ultimately transformed into a set of policies to strengthen the establishment.
True ideological politics cannot enter the gates of the establishment; once inside, they are neutralized, distorted, and tamed. The rule of the establishment is the process of dissolving ideals. They oppose all radical changes because their survival comes from “governance without drama.” Ultimately, they take away not only power but also the space for discussing truth and justice in public life.
Part Two: The Historical Genesis of the Establishment
Structural Consequences of Modern State Governance Expansion
The rise of the establishment is not without roots; it is a natural product of structural changes in modern state governance. Especially in the 20th century, with the rise of big government, the state transitioned from a “night watchman” role to an “active governor.” To address so-called market failures, class conflicts, and social inequalities, government power expanded, creating a multitude of complex administrative functions.
From welfare states to union negotiations, from public education to healthcare insurance system construction, the state’s penetration into social life deepened. This expansion of governance, which began with slogans of equality and justice, ended with the formation of a massive administrative system. Within the government, a layer of administrative bureaucrats composed of technocrats, legal experts, and policy designers was cultivated.
Transformation from Executive Tool to Autonomous Interest Group
These positions were initially created not for power but to execute a kind of social ideal. However, with the decline of political ideals, the loss of democratic vitality, and the self-replication of administrative procedures, they gradually ceased to serve ideals and instead became ideals unto themselves. Originally serving as tools for egalitarianism, they began to develop their own networks of interest, self-replicating logic, and institutional inertia, ultimately serving only the continuation of the institution itself, no longer heeding ideals.
The deep logic of the establishment can be traced back to the evolution of centralized power and the upward responsibility of authority. As political power centralized from local communities, religions, and guilds to the central government, the need for governance grew, and the state had to rely on a standardized, controllable, and assessable bureaucratic system. The establishment grew precisely in this process—from “tools of governance” to “masters of the institution.” This reversal of the subordinate relationship occurred because the institution expanded excessively, leading to the independence of the tool layer, detached from public value constraints.
Analogy with the “Officialdom Problem” in Chinese History
From China’s own historical perspective, the phenomenon of the establishment is not unique to modern times. The so-called “officialdom problem” in ancient Chinese history is a local expression of the excessive expansion of establishment forces. Whether it was the criticism of “vulgar officials eroding” since the Wei and Jin dynasties, the indignation of Confucian scholars in the Song and Ming dynasties against “officials only caring about promotions, not morality,” or the complaints in the late Qing Dynasty about “following outdated precedents and holding office without merit,” they all referred to the same thing: a group of mediocre people, detached from ideals and embracing the system, monopolizing governance and technically shielding the public nature of politics.
These people, in today’s context, are the establishment. They see themselves as “following rules and regulations” and representing “overall stability,” but in reality, they are co-promoters of institutional decay and civilizational stagnation. During the change of dynasties in China, there was always a reckoning with a group of “corrupt officials” and “mediocre bureaucrats,” but often the wrong direction was taken. The problem was often not that “these people violated the system,” but that they merely followed the system and refused principles—and this is precisely the typical characteristic of the establishment.
Part Three: Deep State and the Hollowing Out of Democracy
Mechanisms of Internal Monopoly on Executive Power
The power base of the establishment does not come from the authorization of sovereigns but from the accumulation of executive power—what is known in Western societies as the “deep state”: an unelected yet highly entrenched nexus of administrative and security bureaucracies with its own continuity logic and political preferences, possessing sufficient buffering and diluting capabilities against any politically elected transitions.
Once the government expands limitlessly, touching every corner of social life, this establishment system begins to “attack” areas that should originally be handled by society, the market, families, and individuals themselves. It is no longer satisfied with executing clear public functions but wants to manage, regulate, approve, and supervise everything. In this process, the establishment transforms from executors of public interest into defenders of their own interests.
Typical Case of the EU’s Democratic Deficit
The concept of the “democratic deficit” originally came from criticism of the EU’s governance structure. As a supranational organization, the EU’s policy-making is mainly dominated by technocratic bureaucratic institutions like the European Commission, while the directly elected European Parliament has relatively limited power. EU citizens find that many of the regulations and policies affecting their daily lives are formulated by technical experts and bureaucrats whom they cannot directly hold accountable.
This phenomenon is a typical manifestation of the establishment’s power expansion: technocratic governance gradually hollows out political choices, and professional judgment replaces democratic decision-making. The EU’s example shows that even in regions with relatively perfect democratic systems, once the governance structure becomes too complex and technocratic, the establishment can gain power beyond democratic checks and balances.
Technocratic Governance Undermining Political Sovereignty
This internal nature of establishment executive power directly leads to the hollowing out of elected institutions: elected political leaders cannot effectively promote policies because the design, implementation, and supervision of policies are all dominated by establishment forces; the establishment, through institutional inertia, professional monopolies, and complex procedures, gradually deprives people of their influence over political outcomes. At the institutional level, they make elections a formality; in practice, they turn sovereignty into an empty shell.
Part Four: The Dialectic of Scale Determining Nature
The Rational Boundaries of Establishment Functions
We must recognize a key issue: the technical rationality of the establishment itself is not evil. The core problem is not the existence of the establishment but the government’s excessive expansion, which causes the establishment forces to break free from the constraints of public interest. Just as the Ring of Power can better serve its master; but when the Ring becomes too strong and starts to dominate the master, problems arise.
Moderate institutional inertia and professional judgment indeed have value. We need some people to understand procedures, master techniques, and ensure the professionalism and continuity of policies. The establishment, within the framework of a limited government, is like a functional immune system—maintaining order, executing decisions, and ensuring policy continuity.
The Logic of Qualitative Change in the Big Government Framework
But when this inertia becomes strong enough to resist public opinion, distort policy intentions, hinder necessary reforms, and even create new regulatory demands for self-expansion, the establishment shifts from being an aid to becoming a master, from a tool to a purpose. The expansion of the establishment’s scale is often accompanied by a fundamental change in its nature.
When the establishment’s power is confined to basic public functions, it is subject to clear functional constraints and social supervision, making it difficult to form an autonomous interest group. But when government regulation extends to every aspect of economic, cultural, and social life, the establishment gains broad discretionary power, which itself generates vested interests and drives further expansion of the system, creating a self-reinforcing cycle.
Analogy with the Immune System
This principle can be analogized to the human immune system: a moderate immune response protects health and maintains internal balance, which is a necessity for life. But when the immune system becomes overactive and starts attacking healthy tissues, it causes autoimmune diseases, which in turn harm life itself.
Once a government exceeds its basic functional boundaries, it inevitably cultivates a massive layer whose interests are detached from the public. The larger this layer, the stronger its motivation for self-preservation and the greater its resistance to any change. In the end, the entire society has to serve to maintain this institutional machine that has deviated from its original purpose.
Part Five: Pathways to Deconstruction and Directions for Reconstruction
Avoiding the Thinking Trap of “Rectifying Officialdom”
Facing the issue of the establishment, we must avoid falling into the traditional thinking trap of “rectifying officialdom.” Countless historical reforms of officialdom have been based on a false premise: that the government should manage everything, and the problem lies only in not managing well enough. This line of thinking assumes that we need stricter supervision, more perfect systems, and more efficient bureaucrats to solve the problem of the establishment.
But this precisely strengthens the legitimacy of an all-encompassing government, ultimately only cultivating a larger and more precise establishment system. This is like performing delicate surgery on an overgrown tumor, trying to make it function better, rather than questioning the necessity of the tumor’s existence itself. The more you try to manage officials well, the more officials you need to manage officials; every “reform” circulates within the discourse system of a centralized big government, resulting only in making the establishment even more unshakable.
Fundamental Thinking on Deconstructing Big Government
The real breakthrough lies in fundamentally questioning the legitimacy of the big government framework itself. We need to ask not “how to manage the establishment well,” but “why we need such a massive bureaucratic system.” It’s not about patching up within the big government framework but redrawing the boundaries between the state and society: which things must be done by the government, and which things should be left for society to solve on its own?
The establishment is essentially a byproduct of big government. When the government’s reach extends to every detail of economic life, every corner of social relations, and every aspect of personal choice, it inevitably requires a massive professional layer to execute these all-encompassing regulatory functions. Once this layer is formed, it will generate its own logic of interest, driving further expansion of government functions and forming a self-reinforcing cycle.
Deconstructing big government means cutting off the driving force of the establishment’s expansion at the source. When the government returns to limited functions such as protecting property rights, maintaining order, and providing basic public services, the establishment loses the space for unlimited expansion. They cannot prove their value by creating new regulatory demands, cannot consolidate professional monopolies by increasing administrative complexity, and cannot hijack society through policy dependence.
The Possibility of Rebuilding Political Subjectivity
This deconstructive thinking touches on the fundamental issues of political philosophy. It is not a technical adjustment within the existing institutional framework but a fundamental restructuring of the institutional framework itself. It requires us to rethink the nature of the state, the boundaries of government, and the autonomy of society. Only in this restructuring can the issue of the establishment cease to be a problem that needs to be “solved” and instead become a problem that naturally “dissolves.”
When government boundaries are clear and limited, the establishment is naturally constrained. Within this framework, the establishment reverts to being a tool—a useful, necessary, but strictly defined functional tool. When the establishment is limited within reasonable boundaries, its technical rationality can serve political rationality, and its executive ability can realize political will.
What we need to rebuild is not the victory of a certain political party or the venting of anti-establishment sentiments, but a re-recognition of the essence of politics: Politics is not governance—it is judgment. Politics is not procedure—it is conviction. Politics is not the art of management—it is the pursuit of truth. Only by deconstructing the big government framework can the establishment once again become a tool of politics, not a substitute for politics.
Only then can institutions return to human hands—no longer animated by their own spirit, but once again forged to serve, not command. This is not a technical issue but a fundamental issue concerning human subjectivity and the essence of politics. When we regain the initiative in politics, the problem of the establishment will no longer be a problem; they will return to their proper place: as tools for realizing political will, not masters transcending political will.
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